Presidents

The former security chief of Nagorno-Karabakh was sworn in as the new president of the Armenian-controlled breakaway region. Bako Saakian, who took 85% of the vote in July, headed Nagorno-Karabakh's security service from 2001 until he resigned to run for president. Saakian pledged to push for full independence of the mountainous territory inside Azerbaijan, which has run its own affairs without international recognition since driving out Azerbaijani forces in the early 1990s.

Dr. Robert E. McAfee, a Maine surgeon who has led a campaign against family violence on behalf of the American Medical Assn., has been elected the group's next president. McAfee's one-year term will begin in mid-1994.

Iajuddin Ahmed, little-known head of a private university in the capital, Dhaka, was elected Bangladesh's figurehead president, officials said. Ahmed, 71, was nominated by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's ruling coalition. Ahmed is expected to be sworn in today. He will be the country's 17th president since it achieved independence from Pakistan in 1971. The position is normally given to a non-politician who can be easily controlled by the ruling party.

Nauru President Bernard Dowiyogo died in Washington after undergoing heart surgery, an Australia-based spokeswoman for the government said. Helen Bogden said Dowiyogo, 57, died at George Washington University Hospital on Sunday afternoon. He had surgery Tuesday after collapsing while on official business in the U.S. Dowiyogo had been president of the tiny Pacific island nation, between Australia and Hawaii, six times since first being elected in 1976.

President Bush plans to begin 2006 by visiting wounded troops at Brooke Army Medical Center on New Year's Day. Bush will stop at the hospital in San Antonio on his way back to Washington from a weeklong vacation at his ranch near Crawford, the White House said.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is challenging the results of the July 2 election, alleging vote-rigging, declared himself president in a TV interview and said his supporters would step up a campaign of civil disobedience next week. The leftist, who lost to conservative Felipe Calderon by a tiny margin, said a rally Sunday in Mexico City would show that his backers had the energy to keep up protests. "I am already president. I won the presidential election.

Tens of thousands of Bolivians rallied in La Paz to demand the resignation of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada after protest leaders rejected a compromise offer on a gas export plan that has triggered weeks of deadly street clashes. Soldiers guarded the presidential palace as farmers, workers and indigenous groups descended on the capital, setting off dynamite and wielding sticks. Human rights groups say about 65 people have died.

Former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani resigned from the incoming parliament, state radio announced, depriving hard-liners of a leading figure in the power struggle between conservatives and reformists. Rafsanjani was expected to be nominated by hard-line legislators for the influential post of parliamentary speaker. His decision came a day after reformists--who have aligned themselves behind President Mohammad Khatami--shouted slogans against him at a Tehran University demonstration.

South Africa's ruling National Party, rocked by troublemakers from its right-wing opposition, meets in the Orange Free State capital of Bloemfontein on Wednesday to formally draw up its constitutional proposals. Some 1,200 Nationalists will gather for the federal congress to consider a draft document, which recommends that the post of president be abolished and replaced with a multi-party Cabinet made up of candidates from black and white parties with proven support.

On their 1995 debut album, the Seattle-based Presidents of the United States of America punctured the depressed heft of grunge with hyperkinetic songs teeming with froggies, chickies and kitties. The album sold 2 million and spawned three hits, and the Presidents became fast frat-house favorites. At the El Rey Theatre on Sunday, the band looked weary as it whipped out its trademark two- and three-string guitars.